This invention relates to a tag reader for coded price tags. Such tags were introduced about twentyfive years ago and are provided with machine readable codes, normally in the form of a hole code. Examples of such tags are the so-called Kimball tags. Such tags are fixed to merchandise in many retail stores, and when an object is sold, the sales-person takes away and collects the tag or a detachable piece thereof, and those liberated tags are then treated by machine in order to keep control over sales and stock. The actual processing of the collected tags is made as batch processing, and it is normal for such processing to be made at the central headquarters of a multiple chain of stores.
With present actual practice, this reading is made on big and fast machines, and such systems are popular and widely used.
At the actual sales moment, the tag serves also as a price tag, there being printed thereon a price in readable form. However, at that moment, the handling of the tags is often felt as a nuisance by the salesperson, as it has to be put on a spear or the like, to be collected in an orderly manner with other tags, to be sent later to headquarters. Thus, the tags can mean extra work at busy times when the salesperson rightly thinks that the important thing is to serve the clients as quickly as possible.
There are known various additional devices for the Kimball system. In one instance, an ordinary cash register has been provided with a collector for tags where for each sale of an object, the corresponding tag is entered and provided with extra hole codes for salesperson, actually paid price etc. However, the tags are not read and not used for automatic entering of prices into a cash register.
There are also known various readers for Kimball type tags. An example thereof is the so-called High-Speed Kimball Reader, wherein a stack of tags is entered and the tags are brought one by one in front of a row of photodetectors, which receive light through code holes where such are punched in the tags. In order to feed the tags, they are provided with two round feed holes, where radial pins of a pinwheel enter and bring the tags along a path around a circumferential portion of the rotating pinwheel. Although this machine is very rapid, it is only suitable for batch processing.